Ping Pong Ball LED Light Board
Programable array of LED’s that are inserted into Ping-Pong balls to diffuse the light. I’m thinking of making this either a wall piece or attaching a piece of clear acrylic over the top to turn this into a coffee table. I have no experience programming LED array’s so all tips and tricks are appreciated! How might I be able to improve this idea even more?
I also have no experience with programming LED strips so I can’t help much there, but the overall project seems very interesting. A cool idea would be making it interactive, like programming it so that it turns on and off based on music or some other input.
The effect given by the ping pong balls could look pretty interesting! I unfortunately also am going in with no prior experience programming LEDs, so I can’t provide any insight. However, after reading Taylor’s comment, I did get a potential idea if you have the time and ability to make it work. If the balls were made interactable, you could have a mode similar to the ripple effect on RGB LED keyboards, where when you hit a key, or ball in this scenario, it extends a ripple of light out as if you just poked a puddle. Just a thought. I think overall this idea will look pretty fascinating to watch for periods of time with what effects you find to play around with behind the ping pong balls.
I think it would be cool if you could find a way to make this interactive, like if it reacted to motion or sound. I don’t know how comfortable you are with coding, but i think it’d be pretty interesting to add to the project.
I personally love this idea but maybe I’m biased. I have done this before and it’s a lot of fun. If you need any of the materials or help to program the strips let me know. Id love to work with you if you want to turn it into something bigger.
Awesome Idea! You can definitely find tutorials for building and programming an LED matrix. I find that Arduinos are going to be best for beginners and you can find a lot of support online.
Yeah, I’d agree with Binh saying that you might want to add some sort of interaction or dynamics into it
If you plan to array LEDs (I suppose, with Arduino) & you plan to arrange it all on the coffee table, then pictures can be changed based on the temperature of the drinks which are placed on the surface (it can be done with thermocouples and couple of lines of coding) but that’s just an idea
I think programming them to show sound would be cool, either a pre-programmed track or even setting up a microphone and doing it live would be pretty sweet too!
Personally, I think the idea is cool as is. Depending on if you have extra time, the sound reaction changing colors that others have suggested is a great addition.
This sounds like a fun challenge. I like the idea of making it a coffee table, and other folks’ suggestions for ways to make it interactive.
For controlling strips/matrices of LEDs I recommend using Pixelblaze https://www.bhencke.com/pixelblaze which is pretty easy to get started with even with limited experience. And definitely take Jakob up on his offer to advise – that could spare you having to make the same mistakes he’s already made!
Cool idea! Something to keep in mind is to pick a microcontroller that has enough input/outputs. I know I’ve made that mistake before. I wonder if there’s a graphics library you can find that will play a game of Pong on the LEDs.